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RELIGIONS

AVATARS, DIVINITIES

ShivaNatarajaAvatars of VishnuNarasimhaGaneshKrishnaKrishna-A Bibliography

GURUS, SANTS

TEXTS

PRACTICES

PATHS

MYTHS, CHARACTERS

Ganesh

Ganesh, also known as Ganapati, is immediately recognizable as the

elephant-headed god. He is the god of wisdom and learning, as well as the

remover of obstacles, and consequently the sign of auspiciousness. It is

customary to begin cultural events, for example, by propitiating Ganesh, and

older Sanskrit works invoked his name at their commencement. Ganesh is said to

have written down the Mahabharata from the dictation of Vyasa. He is the lord

(Isa) of the Ganas or troops of inferior deities, but more well-known as the

son of Shiva and Parvati. In the most common representations of Ganesh, he

appears as a pot-bellied figure, usually but not always yellow in color. In his

four hands, he holds a shell, a discus, a club, and a water lily; his elephant

head has only one tusk. Like most other Indian gods, he has a ‘vehicle’, in his

case a rat: this rat is usually shown at the foot of the god, but sometimes

Ganesh is astride the rat.

There are a number of stories about how Ganesh came to acquire an elephant head.

Perhaps the most popular of these legends relates how Parvati, when she once

took a bath, asked Ganesh to stand guard. When her husband Shiva wished to

enter the bathroom [in other variants, it is the bedroom], he was opposed by

his son; in his rage, Shiva cut off Ganesh’s head. Distressed by her husband’s

enraged behavior, Parvati asked him to replace his head; and Shiva did so with

the head of the first living being that he encountered, namely an elephant.

According to a second legend, Shiva slew Aditya, the sun, but was condemned by

the Vedic sage Kasyapa to lose the life of his own son in return; and when he

replaced his son’s life, Shiva did so with the head of Indra’s elephant. Yet

another story about the origins of Ganesh’s elephant head relates how Parvati,

admiring of her son’s handsome looks, asked Saturn (Sani, from which is derived

sanivar, or Saturday) to gaze at her son. But in so doing she forgot that the

effect of Sani’s glance would be to burn the object he gazed at to ashes. In

her distress, Parvati went to Brahma, who told her to replace Ganesh’s head

with the first head that she could find. The sacred "Om" sign with which Ganesh

is often associated points to yet another myth of his birth. According to this

myth, one day Parvati saw the "Om" sign, and with her glance she transformed it

into two elephants, from whose act of intercourse emerged Ganesh. They then

resumed the form of "Om", but ever since "Om" became known as the sign of

Ganesh.

Though all Indian myths are subject to interesting psychoanalytic

interpretations, the myths associated with Ganesh particularly lend themselves

to some obvious psychoanalytic readings. Ganesh can be seen as competing with

his father for his mother, and Parvati is herself, in some myths, seen as

casting a far too admiring look at her own son; on the other hand, one can

reasonably view Shiva as opposing the apparently incestuous relationship

between his wife and their son. Shiva’s conduct towards his son Ganesh is of a

piece with his conduct towards others who are viewed as being in sexual

competition with him, when one recalls that he burnt Kama with his third eye

and beheaded Brahma with the touch of his hand. In some myths, the beheading of

Ganesh is replaced by the act of castration. The roots of Shiva’s violent

conduct toward his own son may lie in the profound ambivalence he feels towards

his own progeny. On the one hand, Shiva stands for fertility, and he is

everywhere associated with the lingam or phallus; on the other hand, he is also

the presiding god of ascetics. Consequently, Ganesh is, in a manner of speaking,

his unwanted offspring.

Ganesh. Seriagraphie. 1992. 65 x 50 cm. Niki de Saint Phalle.

Ganesh remains, in many respects, among the most interesting of the Indian

deities. Though the myths and legends attached to the figure of Krishna are

immeasurably richer, no other Indian deity is as malleable, so amenable to

creative, amusing, ironical, cubist, and three-dimensional representations,

whether in painting, literature, or sculpture. There is no medium — stone,

glass, cloth, paper, bamboo, wood, bronze, and numerous others — in which

artists and craftspersons have not offered representations of Ganesh. He is

unquestionably the most lovable and mischievous of the deities with his

grandfatherly presence, his protuberant belly, and the twinkle in his eyes.

Though there are many festive occasions on which Ganesh is honored, and he has

an abiding presence in many Hindu households, his devotees everywhere in India,

and most particularly in the state of Maharashtra, celebrate the Ganapati

festival with great fanfare. As this festival unequivocally suggests, even

Ganesh has been politicized, but seldom is much wisdom shown when this god of

wisdom is put to use by ideologues to further the political agendas of militant

Hindus.

 

 

 

FURTHER READING:

Primary Sources: The myths about Ganesh are to be found in numerous puranas,

such as Agni, Matsya, Padma, Skanda, and Vamana, but the Brahmavaivarta Purana

offers the richest accounts.

Secondary Sources:

Coomaraswamy, Ananda. "Ganesa." Bulletin of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts 28 (April 1928).

O’Flaherty, Wendy Doniger. Asceticism and Eroticism in the Mythology of Siva.

Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1973.

 

 

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